


Remind me (what was it that I did?)

by Nakimochiku



Category: Pet Shop of Horrors
Genre: M/M, Reunion Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 03:55:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18307685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nakimochiku/pseuds/Nakimochiku
Summary: “Detective. What a surprise.”“Bet it is, ain't it?"Leon and D find each other in Montreal.





	Remind me (what was it that I did?)

Montreal is a strange town, somewhere between European and North American, like a teenager mid way through an identity crisis. He can relate. Leon, loaded down with his life in a backpack, a six pack of beer and “mahogany sunrise” hair dye, legs it down to Rue Saint-Hubert and checks into the first turn of the century house converted into a shitty hostel that he can find. There is a group of three backpackers there, all brown skinned, dark haired and fresh from Peru. He asks one in rough and ugly Spanish where Chinatown is, and if she can dye his hair. She lets him borrow a tourist map, where Chinatown is marked with two authentic arches from Shanghai on either end, and says “how about a shave too?” or at least, he thinks that’s what she says, because her friend comes over with a razor.

Cities are full of transient people like this. He used to fit in with them better. Now, he doesn’t care that he looks haunted. He shares out his beer, because it’s boring to drink alone, and receives a handful of cheetos in return.

“Enjoying Montreal?” she asks between hacking coughs as she breathes the stinking hair dye fumes. “Will you go to the old port?”

“Nah, I’m looking for someone.”

He glances out the window. The cat that streaks down the fire escape, shaped like a young boy in fetish gear, tells him he’s in the right place.

*

Somewhere on the east coast, all Chinatowns start to look the same. Some a little bigger, some smaller. Some in winter and some in spring. In some cities, you turn a corner and suddenly every sign is in some other language. Some welcome you with arches and a brightly painted mural on Rue Rene Levesque.

She looks like D, Leon thinks, with the same curve of smiling eyes, the same red painted mouth. He joins the herd of people streaming into chinatown. There’s a small mall close to Rue Viger, where a little old lady tries to convince him to buy a jacket, but D’s shop isn’t there. He turns right down Rue De La Gauchetiere. Restaurants and bakeries line the pedestrian walkway. Leon stands in the middle, tourists flowing on either side of him, and feels lost. The ring of Chinese shouted in a restaurant (and it's been years but he still can’t tell the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese), the sound of a young man in too much makeup playing traditional folk music on an electric guitar, ground him. Everywhere he goes, Chinatown is the same.

If he can’t have D, at least he can have this.

*

He thinks, walking Montreal’s Chinatown over twice, maybe this place is a bust. He feels in his gut that it’s not, so on his third go around he stops in a bakery for a box of mochi, and a bun that he scarfs down in four bites. He catches sight of himself in the window. He looks gaunt, and the dark hair makes him look creepy. He never put back the weight he lost in the hospital, and he sweat off the rest chasing D through rainforests and savannahs and concrete jungles.

He’s tired but he doesn't know how to stop.

It is a particularly edgy looking pigeon that gives it away. She looks about fourteen or so, wearing a grey dress like something out of Little House on the Prairie. The pet shop is squeezed between a dimsum restaurant and a souvenir shop, barely a door and barely a sign to announce its presence.

He sucks in a breath and tries not to get too excited, tries not to remember when he almost had him in Tokyo.

The place smells the same, dimly lit and quiet after the noise of Rue de la Gauchetière. The staircase is long, going deeper and deeper, until he feels he is farther than the physical city limits, like some other dimension all together. D is still here.

“Bienvenue à l'animalerie de Comte D, notre--” D pauses, blinks, then smiles. After imagining this moment so many times, Leon is disappointed and delighted to find D’s expression cool and unfazed. “Detective. What a surprise.”

“Bet it is, ain't it?” Leon thrusts out his mochi. D accepts with a gracious nod, thin fingers grasping greedy and eager. It’s been years, but this is horrifically natural. He loves it. He resents it.

“I thought I lost you in Tokyo.” D pops open the box, selects a mochi. He doesn't offer tea, or a seat. Leon debates taking one anyway.

“You did. Smart of you to come all the way back to North America.” He runs his fingers through his hair, he's nervous and unsure what to do with his hands, and doesn't want to be reduced to twiddling his thumbs while D stands imperial, impervious, impossible.

“You dyed it.” He wrinkles his nose. “It doesn't suit you.”

“Nah. Threw you off though didn't it.”

“That it did.”

It seems like there's nothing else to say. Leon wonders if D’s spent so long running he has no idea what to do now that he’s been forced to stop. Leon wanders in, settles on an antique sofa, and after a moment D follows.

“Where to start?” Leon wonders aloud, looking at a familiar cherry wood side table (still slightly ringed where he used to set glasses of juice without coasters). How does he say, _come home._ How does he say, _you left us -- me-- behind and nothing is right so come home_. How does he say, _I need--_ he opens his mouth to start but D, delicately pinching his third mochi between his nails, interrupts.

“How did you find me?” His eyes looks wide and defenseless. “Everytime, now, how--”

Leon snorts, “Contrary to popular belief, I was good at my job.”

“Could have fooled me.” Leon opens his mouth to say, _really? We’re gonna do it this way?_ But he sees the glimmer of humor in D’s shining eyes and snorts, looks away.

“Oh haha. Very funny. I get kidnapped one time--” Leon grumbles, D laughs like a bell. He’s finished his mochi. He waits expectantly. But Leon's suddenly lost his steam. He’s tired and he wants desperately to sleep, but he's terrified if he blinks D will be gone in a swirl of incense. He watches him with tired eyes. “I’m glad I found you.” He sighs out at last.

“You do not look well.” D says as though he didn't hear him at all. He flutters closer like a butterfly, almost reaches out with a delicate hand. Leon tips his face into the touch before it even lands and seems to startle D away. He wants to touch. He wants to know this is real. He wants more than any man has wanted before now. Even just to feel the scrape or sting of D’s nails cutting, even just to feel his quiet breathing. And like he felt all his wanting, D pulls away.

“Haven't been pigging out on sweets every other day to keep me plump.” He tries not to let it sound like an accusation. D smiles coolly and moves around the shop. He recognizes the old motions: the way he pulls back his luxurious silk sleeve to fill the kettle, the way he delicately measures out spoons of tea leaves with long white fingers, nails painted in swirls of red and plum. The way he swills hot water around the tea pot to heat the porcelain. If he focuses on just these motions and not the years in between, he can pretend nothing ever happened. But the sharp left over sting of betrayal healed wrong does not let him forget.

“I have some nice strawberry tarts here, then,” D says as though there were no pause in the conversation. “I can't have my detective tromping around looking so poorly kept.” He smiles his secret smile. Leon aches. He wants to ask, _am I? Am I yours still? Even after you—_ “What would the neighbours think?”

Leon sits with that in silence, listening to the soft shift of D’s silk robes, his equally soft footsteps, his even softer breaths. He closes his eyes and locks those sounds in his heart. D will find a way to leave him again. He can't help it. The wind cannot be captured in a bag and fire can't breathe in a jar and D must slip away like a ghost. Or a god. Leon is mortal, has little say on the matter, and feels that truth acutely. “I’m glad I've found you.” He says. “Before I got too old and grey to keep up with you anymore.”

D stills, so silent Leon is afraid to open his eyes and find him gone. The kettle whistles long and loud before at last D removes it. “Would you have looked forever?”

“I would have.” Leon answers firmly, shamelessly. _I will when you leave again._ He opens his eyes. D, painted lip caught beneath a pearl white tooth, looks pleased and troubled and awed at once. Perhaps even that promise terrifies him the way it terrifies Leon. He tries to come to terms with the fact that he was tossed away once before. That he will be again. But like a stray dog grown used to kindness, he will find some way to crawl back to D’s door. Perhaps D can see that too.

At last, D smiles that mysterious smile. Leon has missed it so terribly. “Then, I’m glad you found me as well, detective.”


End file.
